Providential Presumptions

There is a danger in interpreting the providence of God in our own lives. At times we feel as though we have the inside track on the divine counsel only to find how far off we actually are in our understanding of God's providence. Then what happens? Do we repent and turn back to our God in the mercy offered to us in Christ or do we harden our hearts for the wrong we believe we have received because things did not go or turn out the way we thought they should? Perhaps the greatest danger for the "new calvinists" is that their beliefs may be tested in the fiery trials of everyday life.

J.I. Packer on our providential presumptions:

This comforting pretense becomes part of us: we feel sure that God has enabled us to understand all his ways with us and our circle thus far, and we take it for granted that we shall be able to see at once the reason for anything that may happen to us in the future.

And then something very painful and quite inexplicable comes along, and our cheerful illusion of being in God's secret councils is shattered. Our pride is wounded; we feel that God has slighted us; and unless at this point we repent and humble ourselves very thoroughly for our former presumption, our whole subsequent spiritual life may be blighted.

Among the seven deadly sins of medieval lore was sloth (acedia) - a state of hard-bitten, joyless apathy of spirit. There is a lot of it around today in Christian circles; the symptoms are personal spiritual inertia combined with critical cynicism about the churches and supercilious resentment of other Christians' initiative and enterprise.

Behind this morbid and deadening condition often lies the wounded pride of one who thought he knew all about the ways of God in providence and then was made to learn by bitter and bewildering experience that he didn't. 

-J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p.106